Ozark Spring

Yesterday I worked out in the woods, chopping stumps and cleaning paths. Today I have that very special set of aches and pains that signal the real beginning of spring. If that is not enough, I am ate up with chigger bites and I even had a deer tick on my shoulder when I washed up last night. It must have been a very young tick, as the more seasoned among them usually go for more intimate parts.

Today, an overnight rain has loosened the earth, or lubricated it, allowing our spring flowers to just squirt out of the ground. One particular flower, the peony, is always creepy to me when its first stems emerge. The stems look like tiny, skeletal hands emerging from an earthly grave. The peony however is one of my all-time favorites. They will, once up, survive high winds (always here on top of our hill) cold late spring weather and they produce the biggest, most delightful-colors and the sweetest aroma of any flower I know. Peonies are more fragrant than gardenias to my particular olfactory senses.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, a day initiated as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection. Somewhere along the timeline there became a series of add-ons as I recount here. Easter has become a time to buy new shoes, new clothes, candy, and hams. Another thing, the story about a rabbit who delivers eggs which open to reveal candy inside is still a mystery to me. To me personally, I never understood why if there was a rabbit who delivered good candy every Easter, why was he made of chocolate and why did we eat him? Was this not killing the goose that laid the golden eggs?

Honey bee on flowering weed.   
                      Daffodil in bloom.

Squirrels misplaced nuts on a tree trunk.